There is a petition to stop a new media outlet.
For decades, Fox News has spread right-wing propaganda in the US. It backed Trump for president, and helped him incite violence last month.
Now a Fox News-style channel is launching in the UK. GB News, due to start broadcasting within weeks, has £60 million of funding from offshore funders and shadowy Brexit backers.
Ah, yes, the usual bogeymen get wheeled out by these people.
Already, the channel’s bosses are steeped in controversy. GB News will be chaired by the Spectator’s Andrew Neil, who declared that EU supporters are “banned” from watching it. Co-founder Andrew Cole has said the BBC “needs to be broken up”. Sun columnist Dan Wootton has been announced as a presenter and the channel is attempting to recruit right-wing TalkRadio presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer.
Andrew Neil used to work at the BBC. He is right leaning, but hardly controversial. If anything, he is a good interviewer who grills his guests equally hard, regardless of their politics. As for supporters and backers having fairly uncontroversial opinions about the BBC, so what? Indeed, so what if they are controversial? We are all entitled to an opinion.
And Julia Hartley-Brwer, OMG! The world is coming to an end, jackboots down Whitehall. Although the people behind this attempt at censorship will be the ones wearing them, so lacking in self-awareness are they.
GB News is one of several projects trying to shift the media landscape even further to the right in post-Brexit Britain. Another channel along similar lines, News UK TV, is also in the pipeline and is reportedly in talks with Nigel Farage.
The media in the UK is hardly right wing these days. Even the Mail, traditionally a right leaning outlet tends to go with the orthodoxy too frequently for my liking. If there are to be a few right leaning outlets, then that will add some balance and is a good thing, not a bad one as it will add colour to the landscape.
Unless, of course, you are a rabid totalitarian who will brook no dissent.
News should be unbiased and impartial – that’s not just our opinion, it’s UK law. GB News and others plan to use a loophole in broadcasting rules that allows “strongly opinionated coverage so long as viewers are exposed to alternative views”.
Is there any evidence that the news will be reported without due impartiality? GB News will be bound by the same rules as any other outlet. Opinion pieces can be as biased as they wish. This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to shut down a dissenting voice, labelling it as far right – which these days is anyone to the right of Uncle Joe.
We need to close this loophole before biased media takes Britain down the same road as the US.
No. We don’t. Worryingly, there are over 10,000 people who have signed this nasty little petition and presumably think that censorship is a good idea.
“We need to close this loophole before biased media takes Britain down the same road as the US.”
And I thought they would welcome this with open arms.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/send/u61149175 Both me and the wife have sent ours in
Chilli Jon Carne covered this one. Suffice to say, his response was pretty scathing.
The petition-hosting site describes itself as “progressive” – in other words, radical leftist.
If they want to stamp out “bias”, they should start with themselves.
The irony of that hadn’t passed me by.
Stop Funding Hate are a revolting and odious bunch of censors. Strong links with other censorious left wing and Islamic groups and entities that are massively in favour of open borders. Covered this story here. https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2021/02/08/no-view-but-their-view-the-censorious-left-go-after-gb-news/ This is the same group that bullied the Paperchase company out of advertising with the Daily Mail back in 2017 and which did the same to the Lego company.
Yup, just another front for a far left hate group. Their intolerance for the basic liberties shows them for what they are, nasty extremists.
If the negative reaction that this group has got on social media is anything to go by then they may have jumped the shark on this one. They’ve exposed themselves for what they are a nasty far Left hate group.
The only reaction I’ve seen was the post asking me to sign it. I explained exactly why I would do no such thing.
Should take a look at Old Holborn’s Twitter feed, lots of pushback on there last time I looked.
Trump did not incite violence last month. The only people who think he did are anti-Trump leftie morons. Trump told the crowd to march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol building. When the whole sham impeachment is over and Trump is acquitted, all this ‘incitement’ nonsense will be done and finished.
The people behind this petition must be leftie morons. It’s the only explanation for their assertion that the media in Britain lean towards the right. Is the BBC right-wing? Is Channel 4 News right-wing? Is there a genuinely right-wing newspaper in this country? Not really, no. So the notion that GB News will “shift the media landscape even further to the right” is ludicrous.
Indeed, I don’t think there has been a right wing party in the UK since Cameron. The current tories are labour lite, even new labour. That said, the last attempt for them to be right wing with IDS was a shambles with xenophobic undercurrents. Where is the next Thatcher?
I was not aware that news outlets had to be impartial, and to pretend that any is anything but progressive is a ridiculous claim that can only be made by a leftie moron. Why would there be such a law anyway?
Was Cameron right wing, he started all the green Tory bollocks?
Sorry, my meaning was unclear. Of course Cameron was not a tory, what I meant was that the conservative party stopped being so once Cameron became leader.
Cameron is a Left wing Blairite. Major is an EU Socialist. Thatcher was the first and last Conservative PM since Churchill.
UK needs a DUP PM
Can’t fault that in any way: concise and accurate.
I totally agree.
Fully agree, the rot started with Major.
Fox News was pitched to the Murdochs, supposedly, as “half the market – do you want it or not?” or words to that effect. This sounds like a killing in the making.
Now – what was that share dealing platform that was in the news recently?
I can see GB News replacing the BBC as my go to source of news. I’m pig sick of all the leftie twats running UK media.
I don’t think that your alone in that sentiment. I cannot stand BBC ‘news’ and am looking forward to see what GB News has to offer. The dangerous fraggles at Stop Funding Hate must be very aware that a) the BBC is unpopular and b) there are a lot of people who are thirsty for an alternative to a BBC that consistently takes a left to far left viewpoint, something that SFH obviously like. This must frighten them – a lot – and this may be the underpinning for their attempt to kill off GB News before it starts.